


find our mutual coordinates

by greatcatsbys



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drugs, F/F, Prostitution, Sexual Violence, basically every trigger you'd expect from twin peaks to be safe, what is linear storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 10:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6513850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greatcatsbys/pseuds/greatcatsbys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She dreams, but does not wake. Her lungs, like the trees, fill with air; but this, she thinks, cannot be called living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	find our mutual coordinates

**i.**

When Donna remembers Laura, she is dancing.

They are sharing a stolen bottle of wine in Laura’s room, and Laura puts on an old record that she hopes Donna will like. At first, it's on in the background, quiet-quiet, but the rhythm's infectious and Laura stands to turn it up, rocking back and forth looking oh-so-cool in her slim fitting dress that Donna gets up and joins her. Her limbs don't move the way Laura's do, but she tries anyway, wiggling her arms and pushing her hips forward to the music _, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, owww!_ and the two of them end up in stitches. Laura's laugh seems to bounce off the walls as she wraps her arms around Donna's shoulders, pushing her this way and that, Donna clay in her hands, and her lifelessness sets them off laughing again, _uh-huh, uh-huh!_ The noise builds to a crescendo in Donna's ears, punctuated only by a slam from downstairs, followed quickly by another as Laura's father enters the room without knocking, shoving past the two of them to turn the music off, face thunderous.

Donna is too pre-occupied marvelling over the fact that in this house people enter rooms with knocking to notice the menace in Leland's face as he leaves the room silently, or the way Laura flinches visibly as his gaze shifts to her on his way out. Donna does notice the shaky exhale of breath behind her, notices the way Laura looks scared in a way Donna has never seen before. Laura can be scary, but never scared. She smiles shakily, rushing a hand through her blonde hair, and, after a brief lapse, she is Laura again, eyes sparkling, eyes wild. She laughs mischievously, leaning forward, and whispers to Donna that she knows a place where they can play loud music, and then they are driving into the woods and all is forgotten in the shade of the evening.

Donna thinks it an isolated incident, at the time.

 

 

**ii.**

_This is power_ , Laura has to tell herself as she sways her hips, watches people watching her and moves faster and faster to keep the shadows in the corner from encroaching, to keep their hands from her. _This is power_ , she tries again, flashes a smile, lights another cigarette to give her something to do with her shaking hands. _This is power_ ; and she almost believes it, almost, until the shadows start moving and she feels two-four-six hands upon her, the smell of her bedsheets rushing past her, a flash of dirty grey hair, a glint of teeth. Laura's body fails her and she falls to the ground, limbs writhing, her breath hitching in her throat quieting her scream, and hears Leo swear distantly, hears him say _the stupid bitch is fucked up_ before someone sticks another pill down her throat and there is peace.

 

‘Shit’, murmurs Ronette, laughing appreciatively. ‘Is that – _Donna Hayward_?’

Light flickers against Donna’s arched back, against Donna’s bare breasts, pink-red-blue light and suddenly Laura is running towards her, unsure whether to defend or kill. Donna is clutching Laura’s jacket to her chest like a talisman, and remorse hits Laura square-on like a freight train – _oh god, she’s me, why would anybody ever want_   –

Laura wants her out, screams at Jacques to _get her out of here_ ; pulls Donna up by the arm savagely and picks up the jacket, brandishing it in front of Donna and screaming, screaming at her best friend for wearing her clothes, for wanting to be another Laura Palmer. The doped-up smile on Donna’s face infuriates Laura further as she reaches to kiss the guy again, her eyes too hungry and snarling to be Donna’s eyes, her best friend unrecognisable. Laura screams and screams, does not stop screaming until they are out of there, does not stop until Donna’s passed out in the back seat of Jacques’ truck and Laura’s shaking, her hands balled into fists, too fucked to understand why she’s crying.

 

Donna picks at her sweater sleeves tentatively, hands cold and eyes bloodshot. Laura doesn’t meet her eyes, offers no explanation, and the silence hurts Donna more than anything else. Her head is on fire, eyelids heavy, and her body no longer feels like her own, yet still Donna pulls a hand out of her sleeve to tap Laura gently, who recoils at the touch. The look of guilt in Laura’s eyes is enough to make Donna cry again. Silence, even, is preferable. 

‘I don’t want you wearing my stuff,’ Laura says, after what feels like hours. Donna remembers very little of actions or words, but remembers the sensation of Laura’s jacket against her bare skin like armour, galvanising her into somebody rebellious, somebody brave. Donna blinks, confused. Laura has always walked ahead of her, more experienced, more sensual, more magnetic with her eyes and her hips – _and_ , Donna asks herself, _how else could I ever catch up?_  

Laura’s eyes soften as Donna’s threaten to brim over with tears again, and holds Donna tightly to her chest.

‘I just don’t want you to be like me,’ she tries, softer this time, as if a lifetime of shame and nausea and checking the windows at night can be communicated with an embrace. Donna blinks, briefly comforted, but cannot reach Laura; her stuttered ‘but why do you _do_ it?’ wounding Laura more deeply than she had prepared herself for. Laura’s life is a way above Donna’s head, Donna’s life of purity and childhood princess-dreams, Donna’s life of normality – and Laura has to look away. She cannot force herself to meet that searching gaze that simultaneously knows her so well and knows nothing at all.

Donna clasps her hands with Laura’s, intently, face flushed.

 _What do you want?_ Donna thinks. _What do you want me to be?_

 

 

**iii.**

Seeing Laura and James together is something that makes Donna's palms itch. It is hard to understand how she can want two people at once, hard to understand how she has a boyfriend and how they're meant to be going _all the way_ tonight, but still thinks only of James' lips on Laura's neck, of Laura's demanding hand in his hair. Donna feels Laura’s hand in her own hair, too - but only alone, at night, alongside a phantom James warming the bed where Mike should be.

They are a secret, Laura and James, and Donna fits between them neatly, their secret-keeper. There is no room for her here, but it doesn't stop her from longing, doesn’t stop her from playing along.

 

 

**iv.**

Laura’s smiling face is in the newspapers, on the television, perfect smile burnt into the town’s consciousness, singing the landscape with her memory. The stasis, in the aftermath, is stifling; the mourning quiet making Donna’s body itch, itch with a desire to scream, to raze the town to the ground searching for a murder weapon, a bloody scarf, for anything that will lead Donna to her. James quietly agrees; _it will fade_ , he says, _the truth will fade somewhere in the woods and we will never find it, we will never stop missing her._

Donna thinks of the fragments she remembers of the night earlier that week – the way men leer at Laura as she dances, as she takes her shirt off in the bar. It stiffens Donna’s resolve, and her jaw clenches, eyes positively burning as she presses her forehead against James’.

‘The police didn’t love Laura,’ Donna says, her fists clenched, nails branding crescent shapes into her skin. ‘Nobody loved her but us.’

James holds Donna close, his wide spaniel eyes unblinking, and Donna buries her face in his jacket that is soft and downy, in his jacket that feels nothing like Laura’s. It is comforting. It feels like a shroud.

 

At night Donna sees fragments, sees Laura and Ronette and another woman she doesn't know, sees the trees and Laura dancing and the pink-red-blue light that hasn't left her mind since she wore Laura's jacket. Her sheets feel cold and close against her skin, like dense industrial plastic, and there is a language she knows but does not understand floating in the air. There is a flutter of curtains.

In the woods, Laura appears to her, hair matted, dirt on her skin, blood in her mouth. She screams, does not stop screaming until Donna's screams merge with her own, and she is awake and crying and crying and crying -

 _You loved me_ , Laura says to her, voice full of scorn. _You loved me, and still you did nothing._

 

 

**v.**

Shops re-open after the funeral; the diner’s sign resumes its flickering, and the clattering of mill machinery returns to its usual consistency. Life, in Twin Peaks, goes on. It would be easier to forget Laura in order to live, and for a while, Donna is angry, demanding counsel with Laura’s spirit in the graveyard, trying to raise her by shrieking and clawing at stone. When Donna and James embrace, Laura is the space between the two of them, is the whistling of wind through the trees that makes Donna jump guiltily and drenches her body in sweat. Donna is not the type to lament over the unfairness of it all, but sometimes it catches her nonetheless, each memory of Laura an implacable hook lodging into her skin over and over, each one aiming for the heart.

‘Donna, are you my best friend?’ Laura asks Donna every night before she sleeps, over and over, and Donna nods, replies ‘I’m your friend, always’. The more she says it, the more the words hollow out and die in her throat. _Always_ , Donna slowly realises, is easier to quantify when one of you isn’t five foot in the ground.

 

 

**vi.**

_Laura hasn't wanted much to do with me these days_ , Donna remembers thinking in class one day, pen tapping against her notebook, uncharacteristically fishing for attention. She doesn’t know what she wants, exactly, but Donna knows she’d feel much better if Laura talked to her more. There’s only so much humiliation Donna can take at learning more about her best friend through the rumour mill than from the horse’s mouth, and she worries, worries uncontrollably at the gauntness of Laura’s face, at the hushed tones that follow her down hallways. She spends more and more time with Bobby, now, homecoming king and queen arm in arm wearing distorted smiles between each bathroom break. Donna does not possess the self-denial to pretend it isn't jealousy she's feeling. She's jealous as sin, and so when Laura stops her in the hallway after homeroom and asks Donna if she wants to come over after school, Donna doesn't pretend she isn't delighted.

They lie on the floor of Laura’s room, Donna’s curls splayed out against the rug in a messy mouse-brown halo. The bruises littered across Laura's thighs make it uncomfortable for her to rub her legs together under her skirt, and it distracts her more than it should do. Her comedown makes the sensation hurt in a nice way, she tells herself, but her hands skate across the floor, feeling nostalgic for a time gone by, for something she cannot have. Donna rolls over next to her, and moves a stray piece of hair from Laura's face.

'I miss you,' Donna says simply; wants to say _I don't know where you went, but I wish you could come back._

Laura senses this in her face, has always had a talent for sensing such things, and tries not to wince. She wishes, so deeply, to come back too. Her wishing hurts.

'I miss you too, Donna,' Laura says back. And then, more quietly, 'I miss how you make me feel.'

 

The wind whistles through the trees later that night, and makes Laura’s thin shirt-sleeves billow around her like angel wings. It unsteadies her, and she sits down, lies her frail body in the mud, willing the earth to centre her, to root her to something tangible and real. Instead, there is nothing. The ground beneath her rolls and something like rain ricochets off of it, sobering her skin, and suddenly she realises how alone she is – so, so alone, lonely Laura Palmer, friendless and half-dead. She dreams, but does not wake. Her lungs, like the trees, fill with air; but this, she thinks, cannot be called living.

 

 

**vii.**

‘I’m sorry about Laura,’ Audrey says quietly, looking down at her beaten-up saddle shoes.

‘I didn’t think you knew Laura,’ Donna says, eyes narrowing deliberately. Malice is hardly second nature to Donna, but, as with most things, it’s something she’s picking up quickly.

‘Well, sure, not in the way you did,’ Audrey says, foot tapping. ‘I just can’t imagine what it’d be like to lose someone like that. Someone – someone important like that.’ A pause. ‘I feel bad, is all.’

Donna crosses her arms stiffly, unsure of whether Audrey has anybody in her life like that to lose.

‘I remember that time at the Roadhouse, y’know? That time where I saw you and said hey but Laura got so crazy, and you held her and had to take her home and later you saw me outside and looked at me, looked at me with a kinda, _oh, god, I want the floor to swallow me up_ kinda face? And I never knew why you felt that way, but it stayed with me, like – like you wouldn’t do that for just anybody.’ Audrey looks away for a moment, a faint flush rising to her cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t do that for just anybody.’

Donna remembers the ride home that night, remembers Laura draping herself around Donna’s shoulders, remembers Laura’s smoke-smelling breath and Laura’s lips against hers.

‘Really?’ Donna says, more curtly than she’d intended, willing tears not to rush to her eyes. ‘You see, that’s so strange. I don’t remember that night at all.’

 

‘I knew her better than she thought I did’, Donna had said to James the night they’d buried the necklace, and now, she repeats it to herself under her breath, a pithy attempt at consolation. It has become a chant, something almost religious about the way she echoes it to herself to keep the pictures from her head, the pictures of Laura dying in a variety of different ways, fighting until the death in each one. Laura is often down, but never out. Donna knows her better than that, or at least thinks she does. _Did._ Thinks she did.

She knows Laura and does not know her at all, knows Laura in smiles and in dancing but knows nothing of what she does in the dark. She pictures Laura crouched in the shadows, picking at her hair. She pictures Laura in the blue light of the woods, chin jutting forward, waiting to die. She pictures Laura resigned, doubled over and winded from running, facing to turn her killer. She is sick to the stomach when she realises she should know which one is the truth. She should feel something. She should know these things, should be able to interpret the sound below sound. Laura always could, intuitive in that way, and god, oh _god_ , how will Donna ever make peace with this –

 _What do you want me to be?_ Donna thinks, prays. _What do you want me to do? Whatever it is, I’ll do it._

 

 

**viii.**

It is neither that night nor the next, but eventually, Laura comes to her again.

She looks beautiful in a long robe, wearing a smile more radiant than any Donna remembers seeing on her face whilst alive. Her eyes look clear, her skin clean and soft to the touch as her hand reaches out and clasps Donna’s. Donna swears there is music in the air, and Laura sways gently, invites Donna up to join her as she did when they were fourteen and Laura already knew fear. There is no snarl behind her eyes, no harshness in her face; she is Laura as the town remembers her, not Laura as she was towards the end, living solely between acts of bravery. This is Laura as Donna loved her; this is Laura as herself, and she’s crying, she’s happy, and Donna is crying too, overwhelmed with the goodness of it all. Laura kisses Donna goodbye on the cheek, lets go of her hand.

There is a flutter of curtains. There is a flutter of wings.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this actually ended up way less slashy and way more devastating than i had in mind lmao, i haven't written in A Long Time but one day i will write the happy donna/laura fic we all deserve! also i wanted maddy to be in this because maddy is also a darling, i'm not sure where she ended up
> 
> basically donna and laura (and every woman character in twin peaks!!!) are very important, i hope i did them justice. i wanted a happy ending for them because laura's death wasn't in vain. she fought until the end and chose the light, and i thought she'd want donna to know that. 
> 
> on a lighter note, i have very few people to be excited about the new series!!!!! with in my life, so if you're willing to let me shriek at you about how excited i am at the prospect of laura dern being involved in s3 amongst other things pls find me on twitter @greatcatsbys or tumblr (leninlenout) xxxx


End file.
